Istanbul, August 22, 2017: Archeologists have unearthed Neolithic remains believed to be dating back to 6,000 years during a new metro line construction in central Istanbul.

Neolithic circular structures and urn type burials were discovered by the Istanbul Archeology Museum experts at the construction site of the subway station in Besiktas district, Xinhua news agency reported.

According to the experts, the discovery will reveal important information that would shed light on the history of Istanbul and the Bosphorus Strait separating the city’s Asian and European sides.

“This discovery located at the very center of the city will definitely fill an important gap in the history of the region between 6,500 and 3,000s B.C.,” Itir Bayburtluoglu, an archeologist told Xinhua.

“I believe it will disclose significant information about the early settlement alongside the strait, one of the world’s most important sea routes connecting the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea,” she said.

In April, archaeologists have first unearthed some 19th and 20th-century ruins at the same site.

Following that discovery, the authorities have slightly shifted the location of the metro station allowing the experts to dig further the bottom layers.

In Bayburtluoglu’s view, the site likely hosts more artifacts belonging to the earlier periods and they could be retrieved as the excavations move forward. (IANS)

The Russian authorities who control Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula have promised to remove a section of a high-school history textbook that claims many Crimean Tatars collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II.

The senior education official in the Russian-imposed government of Crimea, Natalya Goncharova, said on May 6 that the pages in question would be removed from the 10th-grade textbook History Of Crimea by the end of the month.

Educators and lawyers — some of them members of the indigenous, mainly Muslim Crimean Tatar minority — have urged the authorities to remove the book from the curriculum, saying that it threatens to incite ethnic and religious hatred among teenagers.

Russia seized control of the peninsula in March 2014, sending in troops without insignia, securing key facilities, and staging a referendum deemed illegitimate by Ukraine and most other world countries. Pixabay

The pages that are to be removed include a claim that the majority of Crimean Tatars “were loyal to” the Nazis, and that “many actively helped them.”

The claim echoes the pretext that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s government used when it deported Crimean Tatars en masse from the Black Sea peninsula in 1944, asserting that they were collaborators.

Many died on the journey or in exile in Central Asia and the steppes of southern Russia.

The senior education official in the Russian-imposed government of Crimea, Natalya Goncharova, said on May 6 that the pages in question would be removed from the 10th-grade textbook History Of Crimea by the end of the month.Pixabay

Crimean Tatars were allowed to begin returning to their homeland in the late 1980s, and make up some 12 percent of its population.

Russia seized control of the peninsula in March 2014, sending in troops without insignia, securing key facilities, and staging a referendum deemed illegitimate by Ukraine and most other world countries.

Rights groups and Western governments say Russia has conducted a persistent campaign of oppression targeting Crimean Tatars and other citizens who opposed Moscow’s takeover of the peninsula. (RFERL)